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When lighting designers Electrolight were invited to create a concept for Melbourne’s seventh Light in Winter festival, they turned to the city’s streets for inspiration, specif- ically, the graffiti-emblazoned backstreets and laneways that form an essential part of Melbourne’s creative character. Once seen as a sign of social disintegration, graffiti art is now firmly embraced by the cultural mainstream as a powerful form of grassroots political and artistic expression and, with ‘community voices’ a major cen- tral theme of this year’s festival, Electrol-

ight saw an opportunity to translate this street-level talent into a series of projected light works.

In underground circles, Melbourne has es- tablished a reputation as a world capital for stencil art, a fact that formed the starting point for Electrolight’s Yo Gobo concept. The team put out an online call for circular stencil designs that could be converted into custom gobos and so be used to ‘spray’ light onto the walls of Federation Square. Just three weeks after launching the con- cept, the team had received entries from

all over the world - from France, the UK, Germany and the US, as well as across Aus- tralia. From the 50 submissions, a selection were used to adorn the Fed Square façades over four nights around the Winter Solstice. “This has been one of our all time best community events in terms of public engagement and international participa- tion,” says Electrolight director Paul Beale. “The feedback has been terrific. We have received several calls to make it an annual event and being as photogenic as it was, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter were alive